Special interests poured more than half a billion dollars into California lobbying last year

Lobbying groups spent more than half a billion dollars to influence the state government in 2024, the most ever, according to a CalMatters analysis of data recently filed with the secretary of state. Lobbying by Google, oil companies and utilities during special sessions in the third quarter appeared to drive the sharp spike in spending.

Companies and organizations reported roughly $540 million in lobbying expenses to push their point of view to California officials, including legislators, on hundreds of bills between January and December of last year — and that’s up by more than 10% from $485 million in 2023.

Perhaps that isn’t so surprising in a state with a full-time Legislature and one of the largest economies in the world, said Francesco Trebbi, an economics professor at UC Berkeley who studies political influence and lobbying.

“Half a billion is kind of normal,” he said. “If California is about 14% of U.S. GDP and federal lobbying is about $4 billion, $500 million is about 13% of that. So it would be in line with the size of the California economy.”

Thomas Holyoke, a professor of political science at Fresno State University, said that the spending increase might reflect not only corporations’ desire for more influence but also the growing influence of California policy itself.

As long as California maintains its prominence, “more and more interest groups and lobbyists are going to take what Sacramento does very, very seriously,” he said.

Major players driving the lobbying boom

The Western States Petroleum Association reported more than $17.3 million dollars in advocacy costs over the year, more than $10 million of which was spent last summer, and more than double the total bill of the previous year.

The organization took public positions on 18 bills last session and got its desired outcome two-thirds of the time, according to a CalMatters analysis of data from Digital Democracy, our platform to track state lawmakers and legislation.

In part, the trade group’s spending more than doubled because of increased proposed regulations on oil and gas, including a special session focused on gas prices.

The largest non-oil spender was PacifiCorp, which reported spending more than $13.4 million to influence California officials last year, 30 times the yearly average for the company over the last two decades. The investor-owned utility lobbied for a rate hike but didn’t take a public position on any bills in 2024.

Pacific Gas & Electric, one of the largest utilities in the state, reported nearly $3.6 million on lobbying last year. Over the two-year legislative session, the company took a public position on 45 bills and also got its way on roughly two-thirds of them, or 31 bills.

Google doesn’t usually spend much on state-level lobbying efforts but spent more in 2024 than the last 20 years combined.

The company reported one of the largest totals for state advocacy last year, driven primarily by a spending spree in the third quarter of the year when the tech giant was fighting a media bill and AI regulations. The company got its way in both cases.

Much of its advocacy went through the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which reported spending nearly $7.4 million, $7 million of which came from the Mountain View behemoth.

Only two labor groups spent more than $1 million on lobbying last year: the Service Employees International Union and the California Teachers Association.

SEIU reported spending nearly $3.4 million and the California Teachers Association, another powerful union in the state, spent more than $3.1 million. Both unions took public positions on hundreds of bills and got their way nearly 70% of the time.

How CalMatters analyzed the data

Organizations that hire lobbyists to influence state policy are required to disclose how much money was spent in a quarterly report to the secretary of state, who makes the data and filings available online. For example, the page for the Western States Petroleum Association shows that the industry group spent roughly $1.7 million on advocacy in the second quarter of last year and more than $10.1 million in the following quarter.

CalMatters added quarterly reported expenses to calculate the total annual lobbying bill for each organization, then added every organization’s yearly sum to determine the aggregate amount spent on lobbying California officials per year.

Sometimes, organizations give money to industry groups to lobby on their behalf, such as the $7 million Google paid to the Computer & Communications Industry Association, and both organizations must report that money: Google, when it buys advocacy services from the association; the trade group, when it actually spends the money on grassroots organizing or direct lobbying. Because there’s no way to determine if a payment is to another “lobbyist employer” or to a political or media consulting firm, there are amounts reported more than once in our data.

CalMatters determined the success rate of each organization by comparing organizations’ public positions taken on bills in the last legislative session (2023–2024) as recorded in Digital Democracy to the ultimate outcome of that legislation. Lobbying efforts were considered successful if either of the following were true:

• The organization opposed a bill that failed the Legislature.
• The organization supported a bill that passed through the Legislature (even if it was vetoed by the Governor).

It’s difficult to get a more detailed picture of lobbying because of what isn’t reported in the data. California does not require disclosure of either the offices or staff members who meet with lobbyists or the connections between individual lobbyists and specific bills.

Our analysis found that corporate lobbying efforts were successful about 60% of the time. This is likely an undercount because it can take more than one year to successfully pass a bill.

Micheli said that sometimes a bill can even take more than one two-year legislative session.

“After six or seven years on a really tough bill, you finally get it enacted. Leading up to it, you could say you failed every year,” he said. “But then eventually, you get a seismic change in the law.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.